Mapping urban infrastructure systems is a key requirement to advance our capacity to understand and promote the resilience of cities to both extreme weather events as a result of climate change and to long-term infrastructure transformation as a process of climate adaptation. Yet, while developing nations will bear the brunt of the interwoven, climatic, economic and social challenges of the 21st century, many of these countries lack the sensor networks required to monitor and model the response of the urban system to change.

The nexus of people and place embedded in social media communication which is widespread and ubiquitous in many developing nations offers one potential solution. In this context, location-based social media often in the form of big-data, can be used to map emerging spatio-temporal trends to support situational management. Critically, however, the collection and application of such data raises significant questions around privacy, trust and security of the information gathered. The

MapJakarta.org project will be presented as a demonstration of the capabilities of free and open source geospatial technology to employ real-time social media data in a secure and anonymous manner for the purpose of decision support.

https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/petajakarta-featured-in-the-wall-street-journal/feed/0tomholdernessPetaJakarta project officially launched!https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/petajakarta-project-officially-launched/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/petajakarta-project-officially-launched/#commentsFri, 09 Jan 2015 04:37:51 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/?p=1096]]>The PetaJakarta.org project was officially launched on the 2nd of December, by the Governor of Jakarta, University of Wollongong and Twitter Inc.

]]>https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/petajakarta-project-officially-launched/feed/0tomholdernessPetaJakarta.org launchPetaJakarta Year 1 Research Highlightshttps://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/petajakarta-year-1-research-highlights/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/petajakarta-year-1-research-highlights/#commentsThu, 06 Nov 2014 09:01:15 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/?p=1068]]>November 2014 marks the first year of work on the PetaJakarta project. As we prepare to “go live” in December, the Year 1 Research Highlights gives a snapshot of our progress to date.

Project Abstract

PetaJakarta is a crowd-sourcing data-collection initiative which aims to advance our capacity to understand and promote resilience of cities to both extreme weather events as a result of climate change and to long-term infrastructure transformation as a process of climate adaptation. Developing new ways of capturing information about megacities during extreme events will be critical to understand how the urban environment, informal settlements, and infrastructure will response to the challenges of a changing climate, flooding and sea level rise. This is particularly prevalent to South-East Asian mega-cities which will bear the brunt of much of this change. PetaJakarta is our proof of concept GeoSocial Intelligence Platform, which will harness the power of social media to gather, sort and display information about flooding for Jakarta residents and governmental agencies in real time.

]]>https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/petajakarta-year-1-research-highlights/feed/0asian_circletomholdernessPetaJakarta Year 1 Report CoverHalf the world's population live within the Asian circleNetwork modelling for road-based Fecal Sludge Managementhttps://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/network-modelling-for-road-based-fecal-sludge-management/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/network-modelling-for-road-based-fecal-sludge-management/#commentsWed, 05 Nov 2014 05:28:55 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/?p=1055]]>The Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Municipal Engineer recently published my work on using crowd-sourced data to model Fecal Sludge Management in the settlement of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya.

Abstract

Improvements in the collection and treatment of sewage are critical to reduce health and environmental hazards in rapidly urbanising informal settlements. Where sewerage infrastructure is not available, road-based faecal sludge management options are often the only alternative. However, the costs of faecal sludge transportation are often a barrier to its implementation and operation and thus it is desirable to optimise travel time from source to treatment to reduce costs.

This paper presents a novel technique, employing spatial network analysis, to optimise the spatio- topological configuration of a road-based faecal sludge transportation network on the basis of travel time. Using crowd-sourced spatial data for the Kibera settlement and the surrounding city, Nairobi, a proof-of-concept network model was created simulating the transport of waste from the 158 public toilets within Kibera. The toilets are serviced by vacuum pump trucks which move faecal sludge to a transfer station, and from there a tanker transports waste to a treatment plant. The model was used to evaluate the efficiency of different network configurations, based on transportation time. The results show that the location of the transfer station is a critical factor in network optimisation, demonstrating the utility of network analysis as part of the sanitation planning process.

]]>https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/new-petajakarta-video/feed/0tomholdernessChanging the World with Social Data (Part 1)https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/changing-the-world-with-social-data-part-1/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/changing-the-world-with-social-data-part-1/#commentsFri, 06 Jun 2014 16:47:59 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/changing-the-world-with-social-data-part-1/The Big Boulder Initiative:Twitter #DataGrants offer academics access to social data with the intention to change the world. At today’s panel, three researchers spoke on how they plan to use Twitter data to answer big questions around health, disaster response, and sentiment analysis and the best ways for the social data…]]>

Twitter #DataGrants offer academics access to social data with the intention to change the world. At today’s panel, three researchers spoke on how they plan to use Twitter data to answer big questions around health, disaster response, and sentiment analysis and the best ways for the social data industry to work with academia at large to encourage new ideas, collaboration, and how to train the next generation of scientists to effectively use social data.

John Brownsten of Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical school plans to use Twitter Data to track foodborne illness, which generally goes unreported due to its fleeting presence. Tomas Holderness of the University of Wollongong will use Twitter data to track and test disaster response and decision making during annual flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia, so that future flood damage can be mitigated in real time. Finally, Mehrdad Yazdani of UCSD is using machine learning and artificial…

]]>https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/changing-the-world-with-social-data-part-1/feed/0tomholdernessGeoSocial Intelligencehttps://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/geosocial-intelligence/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/geosocial-intelligence/#commentsWed, 26 Mar 2014 04:51:59 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/?p=1025]]>I recently published a short essay in the IEEE Technology & Society Magazine about the opportunities and research challenges that social media present as a data source for understanding complex urban systems in informal settlements. The post below is a synopsis of the article posted on IdeaPod.

Social media, driven by the explosive uptake in mobile computing, has caused a systematic shift in personal communications on a global scale. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement it is apparent that social media is becoming an integrated part of our global communication infrastructure. Critically, much of this information is underpinned by geographical content such as mobile GPS coordinates, which enable the user to tie their media to a specific location on the Earth’s surface. In this new paradigm, social media are effectively forming a human-powered sensor network.

As world populations continue to grow, and we face the social, climatic and economic challenges of the 21st century, how can we leverage the potential of this new global network of intelligence sensors? How can we use this data to inform us about the urban system and adapt to global change?

]]>https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/geosocial-intelligence/feed/0tomholdernessPetaJakarta_FloodReport 2Spatial network modelling for sanitation planning in informal settlementshttps://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/spatial-network-modelling-for-sanitation-planning-in-informal-settlements/
https://tomholderness.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/spatial-network-modelling-for-sanitation-planning-in-informal-settlements/#commentsFri, 15 Nov 2013 08:53:34 +0000http://tomholderness.wordpress.com/?p=1007]]>Previously, in this blog post, I discussed the ways in which we’re tackling the infrastructure challenges in developing nations using open data. Below are the slides I presented at the first International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure. The work presented is a proof-of-concept model using data from Map Kibera to optimise a road-based sewage network. The great thing about using this data is that for the first time we can glean an insight into infrastructure provision in informal urban settlements, and examine methods to improve it.
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